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Column: On private federal prisons, a victory for independent journalism

 
Published Aug. 23, 2016

Last week, the Justice Department announced that it was directing the Bureau of Prisons to stop using private contractors to run federal prisons, phasing them out as contracts expire over the next five years.

Federal private prisons are a small part of the prison-industrial complex, because most private prisons are at the state and local level. But the Justice Department's announcement may mark the beginning of the end of what has been a miserable failure of privatization. The stock prices of the two leading private prison companies — the Corrections Corporation of America and the Geo Group — cratered on the news.

Privatizing the incarceration of people was always a ridiculous idea. If companies are going to make money out of jailing people — by competing to offer lower prices — the competition can only be perverse.

The Justice Department's announcement is a tribute to independent journalism. Three years ago, Seth Freed Wessler heard reports about people dying needlessly in the federal government's private prisons. Private prisons proliferated in the mid 1990s after the decision to criminalize border crossings inflated the federal inmate population. Private companies offered to expand prisons quickly and cheaply. Government officials were happy to cut a deal.

Wessler spent years digging. He filed open-records lawsuits, interviewed former prison guards, tracked down whistleblowers in the Bureau of Prisons and talked to the families of former inmates.

His series of investigative articles, published in the Nation magazine, blew the lid off the reality. Literally dozens of inmates were dying unnecessarily in federal private prisons.

This month, an inspector general's report confirmed Wessler's revelations. He wasn't "telling truth to power." Those in power already knew the truth. The government's own watchdogs had sounded the alarm about private prisons for years. But year after year the contracts were renewed. And top Bureau of Prisons officials have become executives and board members of the two leading private prison companies, cashing in even as inmates were dying because of inadequate health care.

What Wessler and the Nation did was reveal the truth to the people. What this victory shows is that, despite the corruption of our politics, reform is still possible, citizen movements and independent journalism still matter and decent officials can make a difference.

Katrina vanden Heuvel is editor and publisher of the Nation magazine. © 2016 Washington Post